In his essay “The Problem of Action,” Frankfurt explores an alternate route of explaining agency and action that diverts from the common tread path of causal theories of action (CTAs) like that of Davidson’s. In contrast with the Davidsonian primary reason framework, Frankfurt provides his own picture of an action which he describes as “a complex event, which is comprised by a bodily movement and by whatever state of affairs or activity constitutes the agent’s guidance of it” (Frankfurt 73). In effect, he defines action as a bodily movement that an agent has some sort of control over, emphasizing the simultaneous feedback loop of adjusting the movement to react to changes in the environment. Frankfurt would point to the simultaneous nature of this system (a potentially compensating system, as Prof. Bratman would call it) as justification for it not being a CTA. Whether or not that is an accurate claim is undeniably a point of contention for Frankfurt; however, I will be focussing instead on the problem which he does not even attempt to address: the problem of differentiating between a potentially compensating system that is under an agent’s control versus under a subsystem’s control. I believe that consciousness, regardless of how much philosophical baggage it brings to the Theory of Action, is empirically and intuitively the only way to distinguish between an action and an event.
Firstly, let’s dissect the empirical part of that claim. Frankfurt’s examples to differentiate between action and non-action are usually that of a strictly subsystem event like pupil dilation and that of an ordinarily agent-guided event like moving your arm. By using two significantly different events like this, the contrast between action and event can become lost in the noise of the vast number of physiological differences between pupil dilation and arm motion. Although he does directly compare the action of moving one's arm with the event of an epileptic seizure moving your arm, this is undoubtedly not an obvious example that many readers have first-hand experience with. Instead, I suggest that we look at the event of breathing, of flexing and relaxing your diaphragm to inhale and exhale air from your lungs. This would clearly fall under the definition of a potentially compensating system since our rate and strength of breathing not only react to changes in blood oxygen levels but also changes in our respiratory tract (i.e. breathing harder when your nose is stuffy). The distinction I would like to highlight here is the difference between breathing automatically and breathing manually. We’ve all experienced breathing automatically, it’s what our lungs do the vast majority of the time (can you imagine trying to do anything if we had to focus on breathing all the time), and we’ve all experienced breathing manually. Take a deep breath right now. That’s what it feels like to manually breathe.
It’s clear that breathing manually is an action, according to Frankfurt. After all, your breathing is “under the person’s guidance” (Frankfurt 72). It’s also clear that breathing automatically is not an action. Much like the case of pupils dilating to react to changes in light, automatic breathing is controlled by some subsystem in the brain that guides your breathing for you. What, then, is the difference between these two events? They are both potentially compensating systems that look identical from a physiological perspective. They are both purposive, which to Frankfurt, doesn’t imply anything about the source of guidance. The systems that guide the two events both occur in the brain (automatic breathing being modulated by the medulla oblongata and the pons, regions of the brainstem). The only difference between these two systems is that the part of the brain that controls manual breathing is conscious, whereas the part of the brain that controls automatic breathing is not.
I am invoking a sort of Davidsonian “what else” argument when bringing in consciousness in this way, but allow me to explain the affirmative intuition behind why appealing to consciousness is a logical direction. Philosophers in the theory of action do not argue about causation and events on an atomic level, this is a problem left for physicists and metaphysicists to grapple with. Rather, Davidson and Frankfurt are arguing at the level of abstraction of desires, beliefs, and guidance. Due to my naivety in the field, I hesitate to dismiss the theory of action as a merely verbal debate, however, a primary struggle of action theorists is defining what action is and what the consequences of those definitions are. I argue that if we want our definition of action to most closely match our intuitive notion of what an action is, which I think is a worthy pursuit, then we must invoke consciousness in our definition of action. When we intuitively think about doing something, we don’t think about primary beliefs, potentially compensating systems, or practical knowledge (at least not explicity), we are referencing this first-person experience of what it feels like to do something, what it feels like to command your body. When you breathe manually, there is an inexplicable phenomenal quality of commanding your lungs to breathe that is not present when they breathe automatically.
I realize I have far too much to say about this topic for a two-page paper. There are all kinds of cool consequences of adding consciousness to the theory of action, such as making significant progress in deviant causation, endless causal chains, and the “where’s the agent” problem. I must concede that invoking consciousness solves the theory of action in much the same way that reducing a logical problem to an NP-hard problem is “solving” the problem, but what it does accomplish is give some clarity and direction to the field itself as well as to how it is situated in the great web of philosophy. Defining action as something that your consciousness does might complicate the emerging theory of action with the chaos of the more mature theory of mind, but it nonetheless makes action a phenomenon we can all understand.
Frankfurt, Harry. The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge University Press, 1998.